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Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.

Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.

It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.